To strengthen the capacities of the Product Line Coordinators of the CGIAR Research Programs on Dryland Cereals and on Grain Legumes; and for senior scientists of ICRISAT to mainstream and integrate gender into their work plans and activities, a training workshop was organized between 9-13 December in Hyderabad. The training conducted over five days was based on four modules that helped the participants to understand gender as a social construct, and also introduced them to different tools, methods and process…

The members of the Research Management Committee (RMC) of the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals met for the first time at the ICRISAT campus, Hyderabad, on 21 – 22 October. Over the two days, the committee brainstormed and devised work strategies for the research activities for the Dryland Cereals program for year 2014-15 and Phase II of the program. The RMC part of the governance and management structure of the program, will lead the research portfolio of the program.…

Dr Shoba Sivasankar joined ICRISAT as Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals on 11 July 2013. With a combined expertise in agronomy, cereal crop physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics, she has been working most recently with the private seed company, DuPont Pioneer, leading the Corn Drought Tolerance Gene Evaluation Program, until assuming her current responsibility. 1. The CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals (also known by its operating name, Dryland Cereals) is an ambitious multi-country global research…

A major new global partnership to improve dryland cereal crops, the staple foodstuffs of hundreds of millions of poor people in the developing world, was launched on Feb. 6, 2013 in a formal ceremony at ICRISAT headquarters near Hyderabad, India. Known by the official name of “CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals”, this new Program will breed more productive varieties of sorghum, pearl millet, barley and finger millet that are adapted to grow without irrigation under the hot, dry…

A new study by the CGIAR Consortium’s Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) estimates that the global production of wheat, rice and maize could decrease by 13 to 20 percent in the coming decades because of climate change – even as production needs to rise by 70 percent to feed the 9 billion people by 2050. To do that, CGIAR scientists suggest that farmers may have to cultivate crops that are more drought and heat tolerant, like millet, sorghum and barley. http://www.icrisat.org/Climate-Conversations.htm

The CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Cereals (Dryland Cereals) is a partnership between two members of the CGIAR Consortium – ICRISAT (lead center), and ICARDA, along with a number of public and private institutes and organizations, governments, and farmers globally.